Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, most popular ex-US president is…

This is the first time Donald Trump has been included in Gallup's survey about former presidents.

Donald Trump has one of the lowest approval ratings of former US presidents, lagging behind several of his predecessors, according to a survey conducted by Gallup. The survey asked Americans whether they approve of certain former presidents and showed that Donald Trump had an approval rating of just 46 per cent. This comes as Donald Trump continued to campaign ahead of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Former US president Barack Obama.

This is the first time Donald Trump has been included in Gallup's survey about former presidents. The survey was last conducted in 2018 .

The 2023 Gallup polling was conducted among a random sample of 1,013 adults living in all 50 US states. Donald Trump's retrospective rating is higher than Gallup's average approval rating for the former president when he was in office.

"Not only do retrospective approval ratings tend to improve over time, but they also are generally higher than presidents' average job approval ratings while they were in office," Gallup noted.

Only Richard Nixon's rating is lower than his average during his term, the survey found. Nixon's approval rating stood at just 34 percent in Gallup's survey. Gallup found that former president John F. Kennedy had the highest approval rating of the presidents listed at 90 per cent.

Ronald Reagan, a Republican, came in second place with 69 per cent approval and 28 per cent disapproval. Barack Obama had an approval rating of 63 per cent in the poll, compared to 37 per cent who disapproved of him while George H. W. Bush had 66 percent approval and 32 percent disapproval.

Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were also rated but two former presidents were not included in Gallup's survey—Ford and former President Lyndon B. Johnson.